Shallow water anchors are used in commercial and recreational applications to anchor a watercraft in relatively shallow bodies of water. Anchors of this type have the advantages of being easy to manipulate, relatively quiet in their operation, and having a small power requirement to stow and to deploy. One example of a contemporary shallow water anchor may be readily seen at U.S. Pat. No. 8,776,712 to Bernloehr et al. titled “Shallow Water Anchor,” the teachings and disclosure of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety herein.
Such shallow water anchors may be transitioned from a stowed position to deployed position and vice versa by a variety of methods. For example, as is done in U.S. Pat. No. 8,776,712, a mechanical actuation can be utilized wherein an electric motor drives a mechanical system to transition the anchor. As another example, the anchor may be transitioned from a stowed position to a deployed position using a hydraulically actuated configuration.
Mechanically actuated configurations such as those mentioned above have the advantage of allowing for a variety of additional anchoring functions such as auto-bottom detection, auto-packing to ensure sufficient anchor insertion, and rough water compensation. Hydraulically actuated systems, on the other hand, do not heretofore offer such additional functionality but instead provide all the advantages of utilizing hydraulics.
While shallow water anchors of the type introduced above remain an effective means for anchoring a watercraft in shallow bodies of water, there remains a need in the art for improvements in such hydraulically actuated shallow water anchors in terms of their ability to deal with turbulent waters, anchoring functions, and control. The invention provides such improvements for a hydraulically actuated shallow water anchor. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.